It’s possible that one of the more familiar, stately and infamous old houses in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood — the Croke-Patterson Mansion — has long suffered from a broken heart.

There are more ghost stories around this red sandstone, Chateau-style, sleigh-roofed building on East 11 Avenue between Logan and Pennsylvania streets than there are bats swirling through the neighborhood’s towering trees at dusk.

“From stories of suicides (in the house) to guard dogs that were so frightened they jumped to their deaths out a third-floor window, the Croke-Patterson Mansion is one of the most intriguing haunted houses in America,” writes Kevin Sampron with Colorado’s Spirit Paranormal Investigators.

But experts on the house and its alleged spirits say its dark energy may be waning.

That’s because after standing empty and neglected in recent years, new owners plan to revive the property as a bed-and-breakfast called The Patterson. To build excitment around its rehabilitation and offer the public a chance to peek inside, the Croke-Patterson Mansion throws open its doors this week for two Halloween-style events.

First, on Wednesday, the service and education non-profit Mile High Youth Corps transforms the house into a “Wunder-Kammer” (that’s German for cabinet of curiosities) during a wine tasting and ghost hunt benefit. Tickets for this are $25-$70 at milehighyouthcorps.org.

Then, on Thursday, local authors Ann Alexander Leggett and Jordan Alexander Leggett will host a charity book-signing of their new tome, “A Haunted History of Denver’s Croke-Patterson Mansion” ($19.99, History Press). The event begins at 6 p.m. and benefits Historic Denver, which oversees the house through a preservation easement. Advance tickets are $25 at cpmansion.eventbrite.com.

“This house has seen so many different lives,” says author Ann Alexander Leggett. Its builder in 1890 was Thomas Croke, but the place also takes its name from longtime resident Thomas Patterson, a prominent Colorado politician and newspaperman. (The inexplicable sound of typing is but one of its reported peculiarities.)

More recently, it has been both a single-family home and apartments. According to local lore, one resident reportedly lost a baby in the house. She later committed suicide there.

“I know it sounds crazy,” says Leggett, who penned her book about the house with her daughter, Jordan, “but we have this feeling that the house is finally happy, and it has not been.”

One thing the Leggetts can say for sure: People quickly develop a passion for the Croke-Patterson Mansion.

Brian Higgins and Travis McAfoos know the feeling. Through the process of stabilizing the house — shoring up the roof, repairing the plumbing, etc. — to open it as a bed-and-breakfast, these current mansion co-owners have experienced weird things there. But they’ve also come to adore the place.

“The public is so intrigued by this property,” says McAfoos, who favored the B&B idea because it’s a business that can pay for itself. “Now the public will have a use for it.”

Crews are feverishly working on snow removal on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, racing to open the popular, well-traveled, sight-seeing highway by Friday, in time for Memorial Day weekend traffic.